21-year-old Kaori Sakamato picked up her first ever World Championship medal – a gold – in Montpelier this past weekend. Her gorgeous short program, to Now We Are Free from “Gladiator”, scored her an impressive 80.32 points, a whole 5.32 points ahead of the competitor sitting in second place.

Climbing down the standings, Loena Hendrickx of Belgium skated a clean short program to receive the score of 75 for her performance to Caruso.

The two top American girls, Mariah Bell and Alysa Liu fought closely for third place in the short skate standings. Ultimately, Bell triumphed, narrowly beating Liu by 0.64 points, giving her that third medal spot heading into the conclusion of the competition: the free skate.

Of course, with the absence of the recent Olympic Champion and Olympic Silver Medallist, Anna Shcherbakova and Alexandra Trusova, Kaori Sakamato, who won bronze at the recent Olympics, was favoured to take the title ahead of her other competitors. With all Russians banned, a new country had the opportunity to produce a World Champion, considering Russia have had 5 of the last 6 winners.

With so much potential for things to go wrong in Figure Skating, the overall winner of he competition was still very much up in the air. However, based on past performances and consistency over the season, the fight for a medal was centred around the top four from Day 1: Kaori Sakamato, Loena Hendrickx, Mariah Bell, and Alysa Liu.

Alysa Liu was first to skate to a rendition Violin Concerto in D, op. 35 by Petr I. Tchaikovski, giving her 139.28 points. All of her jumps were clean, she had no deductions, and the overall package of the performance demonstrated her incredible musicality which was expressed in such a heartfelt manner it’s impossible not to root for her.

Teammate Mariah Bell didn’t fare so well, taking deductions on both her Triple Lutz + Double Toeloop sequence and Triple Lutz. The performance to Hallelujah gave her 136.11 points, placing her behind Liu in the overall standings.

Loena Hendrickx of Belgium was the penultimate skater, putting her soul into her routine to an “Oriental Mashup” made for her. After landing her Triple Salchow perfectly, a huge smile spread across her face and she completely relaxed into the routine. As she glided around the ice after this, she had the audience in the palm of her hand, taking control of the entire rink and capturing everyone at home, too. When the music ended, she was in tears, knowing she had just secured Belgium’s first ever World Championship medal. Her combined score of 217.70 gave her the Silver Medal, a historic day for Belgium.

Last to take the ice was Japan’s Kaori Sakamato, skating to No Fight Left In Me by Imany and Armand Amar. Nailing all of her jumps and sequences, the 21-year-old seemed pretty confident that she had won when the music finished, slapping the ice in excitement.

Her total score flashed up on the screen: 236.09! A whole 18.39 points ahead of Hendrickx, she rocketed into first place, taking the title of World Champion.

The final standings were as follows:

Gold: Kaori Sakamoto (JPN) — 236.09
Silver: Loena Hendrickx (BEL) — 217.70
Bronze: Alysa Liu (USA) — 211.19
4. Mariah Bell (USA) — 208.66
5. Young You (KOR) — 204.91
6. Anastasia Gubanova (GEO) — 196.61
7. Haein Lee (KOR) — 196.55
8. Karen Chen (USA) — 192.51
9. Yekaterina Ryabova (AZE) — 188.50
10. Nicole Schott (GER) — 188.42

Britain’s Natasha McKay missed out on a top 10 finish, placing 23rd with 159.27 points.

Notably, this was the first podium featuring three skaters representing three different countries since the 2014 World Championships in Saitama, Japan, which is where the 2023 competition will take place.